Abstract
Ranked-choice voting has come to mean a range of electoral systems. Broadly, they can facilitate (a) majority winners in single-seat districts, (b) majority rule with minority representation in multi-seat districts, or (c) majority sweeps in multi-seat districts. Further, such systems can combine with rules to encourage/discourage slate voting. This article describes five major versions used, abandoned, and/or proposed for US public elections: alternative vote, single transferable vote, block-preferential voting, the bottoms-up system, and alternative vote with numbered posts. It then considers each from the perspective of a ‘political strategist.’ Simple models of voting (one with two parties, another with three) draw attention to real-world strategic issues: effects on minority representation, importance of party cues, and reasons for the political strategist to care about how voters rank choices. Unsurprisingly, different rules produce different outcomes with the same sets of ballots. Specific problems from the strategist’s perspective are: ‘majority reversal,’ serving ‘two masters,’ and undisciplined third-party voters (or ‘pure’ independents). Some of these stem from well-known phenomena, e.g., ranking truncation and ‘vote leakage.’ The article also alludes to ‘vote-management’ tactics, i.e., rationing nominations and ensuring even distributions of first-choice votes. Illustrative examples come from American history and comparative politics. A running theme is the two-pronged failure of the Progressive Era reform wave: with respect to minority representation, then ranked voting's durability.
Highlights
Over the course of the past two decades, various forms of ranked‐choice voting (RCV) have been adopted in the US
Other key features are district magnitude, allocation rule, the size of an assembly (Rae, 1967; Shugart & Taagepera, 2020), and rules that do or do not encourage coalition‐minded bal‐
The emerging literature in American politics has focused on just one form of RCV, where district magnitude equals one
Summary
Over the course of the past two decades, various forms of ranked‐choice voting (RCV) have been adopted in the US These include at the local and state levels, with and without partisan elections, and sometimes for party pri‐ maries. For the purpose of what follows, RCV means an elec‐ toral system in which voters rank candidates and bal‐ lots transfer to ‐ranked picks until all seats in a district are filled Such systems can facilitate (a) majority winners in single‐seat districts, (b) major‐ ity rule with minority representation in multi‐seat dis‐ tricts, or (c) majority sweeps in multi‐seat districts. These problems are less common in multi‐ party RCV democracies.
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